Violence that Took Place in the Twentieth Century

In his Wall Street Journal essay, “Violence Vanquished,” Steven Pinker claims that contrary to perceived notions of increasing violence and turbulence in the world, "brutality is declining and empathy is on the rise.” Pinker establishes this argument through numeric comparisons of death tolls, genocides and other aggressive perpetrations in modern society with those in prehistoric times. He credits the fall in these quantifications of “violence” to the processes of pacification, civilization, humanitarian revolution, Long Peace, New Peace and the rights revolution that have together created an environment conducive to “our better angels.”

On the brink of war, with the enemy force appearing impenetrable and unstoppable, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill has the daunting task to rally parliament to enter the war. While speaking to the House of Commons, the representing body in the United Kingdom, he must not only create a lasting impression, but illustrate the logistics of the meeting as well as the dire importance of victory for the Allies. He opens with the immediate facts to answer any of the parliament’s doubts or concerns, then he focuses his attention to unity and expands his audience to the entire country of the United Kingdom to express the sentiment of unity and the importance of the call to arms.

Although the world seemed at peace in the early 1900’s but world’s powerful forces were pushing Europe towards war. These forces included militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism.

Violence in America America is a violent nation. Many people think that America is full of freedom and democracy. Do these people actually see what happens in America? Do they see the violence in schools, the crime in our society? Most likely, no, these people have loosely seen our society, the violence and the frauds that plague America's history as well as the present.

During the 1800’s the United States was consumed by racial tension and discrimination. The African American people wanted to be equal to the white people, and the white people felt the African Americans shouldn 't be. This caused many uprisings and the formation of groups based on belief. One very infamous group was the Klu Klux Klan. They were a group based on hate and violence towards African American people. The KKK eventually extended into every state, victimizing any African American they could.

The progress made in the 20th century is staggering. Advancements in science, medicine and technology alone have brought incalculable benefits to human beings. Yet on the darker side, the 20th century was also the most violent time of human history. Two world wars, the massacres of Stalin, the Holocaust of Hitler, and many other such events killed over hundreds of millions of people and inflicted extreme suffering on hundreds of millions more that will make this period in time and period that will be remembered forever.

In this TEDTalk, Steven Pinker introduced an interesting trend in societal violence. The talk began by presenting fax that showed a dramatic decrease in the amount of violent crime beginning as far back as the earliest human hunter-gatherers. In many places during that time period, the chances of dying at the hands of another human were as high is sixty percent. Although the media and people tend to believe we are living in a time of extreme violence, we are actually living during one of the most peaceful times in human history. Even though the 20th Century witnessed tragedies such as the Holocaust, Rwanda, Stalin’s mass executions, and two World Wars, the chances of a human by violent means was less than three percent.

Bertrand Russel, a British philospher, spent the evening of August 3, 1913 walking around the neighborhood of Trafolgar Square where he noticed, "Cheering crowds, and making myself sensitive to the emotions of passerby. During this and the following days I discovered to my amazement that average men and women were delighted at the prospect of war." ;this shows that the average British adult were happy that a war was going to happen.

Our history was altered during the twentieth century through warfare that has occurred worldwide. Starting with the first major war in 1914, First World War, new technological advances involving the strategy of warfare have been introduced, thus altering its effects on society. People kill and get killed defending the beliefs of their nation, religion, family, and political views. The governments of several countries changed during the twentieth century due to the outcomes of warfare. Some of the advances have led to safer, more precise warfare, while others have been destructive to the existence of many species, Homo sapiens included. The advances that are continuing to come out could permanently alter the way the world functions. Actions

As most people would agree, the 20th century contained some of the bloodiest and most gruesome events ever recorded in history. Why do words such as Hiroshima, Rwanda, The Final Solution, A Great Leap Forward, The Great Purge and so many more spark such vivid images of blood, torture and murder in our minds? And despite those horrific images, what is it that causes us humans time and time again to commit such crimes against humanity? Those are the kinds of questions Jonathan Glover, a critically acclaimed ethics philosopher, tries to answer in the book he had spent over ten years writing, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century. Through Humanity Glover tries to answer those questions in a way which will give a solution as how we can

Today, in a social media ridden world where there’s no communication gap, allows news from around the world to be delivered to us in matter of seconds. Almost every day we hear about a shocking act of violence, whether it’s a terrorist bombing, a senseless rape or a gruesome murder. These tragedies makes us wonder, “What is the world coming to?” However, we forget to realize that in fact today’s world is much more peaceful compared to how dangerous life was thousands of years ago. As pinker stated, “Brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence” (2). Therefore, in order to understand the violence we witness today, it’s important to acknowledge how bad the world was in the past. In this paper, just as pinker did in his book “The Better Angels of our Nature”, I will also argue that violence has decreased tremendously over the centuries by using numerous evidence and statistical data. The Pacification process, Civilizing process, and other sanctions throughout millenniums are just some of the changes that resulted in the decline of violence throughout history.

The most violent year was 1968 due to the many riots and protest experienced in the year that led to deaths of civilians,murder of Martin Luther King,and Kennedy the Vietnam war during the same year

The history of human nature has been bloody, painful, and even destructive. Nonetheless, before understanding their environments humans used to kill each other based on their own mindset on the ideal of violence, and what it actually meant. Pinker describes narratives of violent acts from the past, that today are foreign to us. He gives us a tour of the historical human violence and how the violence in human nature has changed throughout time. The main idea from Pinker’s book,“The Better Angels of Our Nature ', is “for all the dangers we face today, the dangers of yesterday were even worse.” He provides its readers with explicit violent stories beginning from 8000 BCE to now, and describes how violence has evolved from a blood lost to more of a peaceful existence.

In order to fully understand how Britain’s decision to go to war against Germany is best explained one must engage into the debate revolving around the question of the extent to which Britain and other countries were responsible for causing war. This helps explain the intention Britain had for war which is vital in understanding their decision making process to cause war in the first place. Some schools of thought have come to the conclusion that it was everybody or nobody- the continent “slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay.”1 That analysis will be considered in this essay as will the widespread thesis that it was Germany’s aggression which not only created the preconditions for war, but also triggered Britain into war with the political imbalance of power being created from the growing naval and colonial expansion of Germany. Other factors that help explain why Britain went to war against Germany

In the year 2000 there are many problems with society. One of the biggest and most controllable is the issue of violence. Although we are subjected to violence everyday by simply turning on the news, other forms of violence for entertainment can be censored.